Seasonic Prime 850 W Titanium PSU Review
Seasonic made an impressive entry in the 80 PLUS Titanium category with its Prime series. This line's current flagship, offering 850W capacity, is being reviewed today. Besides high efficiency, it sports quiet operation and top performance.
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Packaging, Contents, Exterior, And Cabling
Packaging
The box is exactly the same as the one that houses Seasonic's 650W Prime model. Only the capacity description up front and technical/power specification tables are different.
When you buy such an expensive product, you expect it to be housed in nice packaging. Seasonic's Prime 850 W Titanium won't let you down in this regard.
Contents
The outer sleeving hides glossy black cardboard, which is sturdy enough to protect the PSU inside. Seasonic also uses packing foam, which offers enhanced protection compared to more eco-friendly materials that some other manufacturers favor. A velvet bag gives the PSU one more layer of protection from scratches. It's a nice touch, given the Prime's price tag.
A smaller box contains the modular cables, along with the AC power cord, while a nylon bag stores the user's manual, another leaflet, a Seasonic case badge and sticker, a set of screws, several Velcro straps, and a number of zip ties.
Exterior
Seasonic's finish is very nice, and it thankfully doesn't attract fingerprints. The silver fan grille easily differentiates this model from its competition.
Aside from the power switch up front, you'll also find a push-button that toggles the fan's hybrid operation (or semi-passive mode, if you prefer) on and off.
The sides of Seasonic's SSR-850TD are attention-getting. Meanwhile, you'll find the power specifications label on the bottom of the PSU.
Around back, Seasonic marks the CPU/PCIe, M/B, and Peripheral sockets. You can connect the eight-pin PCIe and EPS cables to any of the corresponding sockets, and even if you use all of the provided cables, there will still be an eight-pin socket left empty. We suspect the company plans to use the same modular panel for its upcoming 1kW Prime Titanium model, at which point it'll probably make use of that connector.
The unit's dimensions are small, given 850W of capacity. As a result, the SSR-850TD enjoys a high power density score. You'll also have less trouble fitting this PSU into compact enclosures.
Cabling
The provided cables use black wires. Except for the main ATX cable, they're all flat in order to block less airflow inside your case. Some enthusiasts don't care for ribbon cables, but we prefer them over rounded ones for clean routing.
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Aris Mpitziopoulos is a contributing editor at Tom's Hardware, covering PSUs.
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Nintendork There's no need for CF/SLI anymore, the typical PC + RX480/1080 class gpu barely goes above 300w (even less with APU setups or RX460/1050ti). We need way more 400-500w Titanium PSU's.Reply
We should have 90% efficiency at 50w load with PSU's in that wattage range. -
WFang I'm eagerly anticipating the 600W Passive Seasonic Titanium unit.. I read about it almost a year ago, and still have not seen it tested here ... hope that changes soon.Reply -
Unolocogringo 18846027 said:There's no need for CF/SLI anymore, the typical PC + RX480/1080 class gpu barely goes above 300w (even less with APU setups or RX460/1050ti). We need way more 400-500w Titanium PSU's.
We should have 90% efficiency at 50w load with PSU's in that wattage range.
Just because you do not need one , does not mean others don't.
I run multiple graphics cards for Folding@Home.The more you can run on each CPU the better. People who run Dual 1080s or dual 39x cards need them to push their 4K monitors.
So there is a need for them.
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TJ Hooker
The thing is, efficiency arguably matters less the lower the power is, because the absolute power being wasted is small. A 500W titanium PSU at max load is only drawing 15W more than a gold rated one. At 50%, 10W. As load drops past 50%, efficiency goes down, but absolute power wasted will still likely go down as well. I don't know, getting a 400W titanium PSU just seems like you're probably paying a lot more money than is necessary for a over engineered PSU which has little to no difference in performance compared to a less efficient, cheaper PSU.Nintendork said:We need way more 400-500w Titanium PSU's.
We should have 90% efficiency at 50w load with PSU's in that wattage range. -
powernod Just like Aris stated at his review, i find it amazing how Seasonic managed to generate such a low ripple values without using cable-in capacitors like the rest of the companies do !!Reply